An industry breakthrough by Acme Corrugated Box.
The Need: A Non-Stick, Food Safe Meat Mold Box – Without a Plastic Liner
B&M Meats’ uncompromising commitment to quality is its calling card. Since 1956, the family-owned Delaware business has supplied the steak sandwich industry with USDA-inspected quality beef and chicken products.
As an early step in its manufacturing process, meat is extruded into mold boxes that form it into blocks (called bricks) before it can be flash-frozen, sliced, and packaged again to ship to customers. But in recent years, this process presented a hurdle: Like many meat processing companies, B&M used corrugated mold boxes. While lightweight and flexible, corrugated mold boxes are not food safe or non-stick. A plastic liner had to be placed between mold box and the raw meat itself.
This created two problems:
Occasionally the plastic liner stuck to the meat, requiring time-consuming manual removal. Secondly, the plastic liner had a tendency to gather, creating uneven or sloppy corners. Teams often had to shave away the meat brick’s perimeter to create clean corners and lines, wasting raw meat and adding time and cost to the manufacturing process.
In 2018, B&M had had enough. They sought to eliminate the problematic plastic liner from their process by finding a mold box material that was both non-stick and food safe.
It was a tall order.
“We had a unique challenge in that we needed to maintain structural integrity of our meat and food safety with food contact packaging. On top of this, we wanted to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill,” explains Darren Buseman, B&M Meats’ General Manager.
B&M Meats reached out to Acme Corrugated Box for ideas.
The Solution: AcmeGUARD®
To solve B&M Meats’ challenge, our team turned to AcmeGUARD®, our proprietary, breakthrough moisture resistant corrugated packaging. AcmeGUARD® is a rare example of a coated material that’s not only non-stick and meets federal guidelines for direct food contact – ideal for packing and shipping wet, raw, and frozen contents – but also fully recyclable, which is rare in coated packaging options.
Today, B&M can place meat directly into the AcmeGUARD® mold box without a problematic plastic liner, dramatically reducing risk, time and waste – a breakthrough for B&M Meats and the industry as a whole.
Other AcmeGUARD® benefits:
- In addition to wet, raw, and frozen products, is ideal for baked goods and other foods prone to sticking.
- Provides an anti-scuff surface that protects high-quality finishes.
- Operates on the outside like conventional shipping materials. Can receive adhesive tapes and labels as well as ink.
The Outcome: Big Time and Cost Savings for B&M
Thanks to AcmeGUARD®, B&M Meats customers continue to receive the delicious quality steaks they expect and deserve. Meanwhile, B&M was able to drop plastic liners from its manufacturing process, saving valuable time, product, and money – via a coated box that’s fully recyclable, no less.
“Acme Corrugated Box was the only company that had an open mind, listened to our needs, and collaborated to engineer a turnkey solution,” Buseman says. “With relentless commitment from their sales team, talented engineers, dedicated customer service, supportive executive management, and their creative culture of innovation that pushed outside of the box (excuse the pun!), we were able to test and develop a solution that accomplished all of our goals. Beyond the obvious benefits, we have eliminated our plastic foreign contaminant possibility, improved our production process, and continue to eliminate tons of waste to the landfill.”
Struggling with how to ship frozen meat, pack frozen meat, or ship or pack another wet, raw, or frozen food? Let Acme Corrugated Box introduce you to AcmeGUARD®. Contact us today.
